The major goal of the North Carolina State University STEM Scholars Program is to create an academic support system for economically disadvantaged students living in the Raleigh geographical area to successfully graduate from NC State University. The program offers a comprehensive package of financial, mentoring, and career support to undergraduate students pursuing degrees in engineering and statistics disciplines, which includes 75% of in-state tuition costs. Some other activities of our scholarship program provide career-building activities such as industry visits with partner companies and mock job interviews that bolster students’ professional confidence and better prepare them for their careers. For students interested in research, the scholarship program connects them with faculty on campus, thus allowing them to further explore their interests by conducting undergraduate research.

We have established a framework for recruiting candidates on the practices developed in the first two years for the program. Following admission to NC State engineering or statistics programs, candidates complete an online application. For the 2016-17 recruitment cycle, 22 candidates were invited for face-to-face interviews, from which eight (8) were selected as scholarship recipients.

During the 2015-16 academic year, six scholars, two in 2015 Fall and four in 2016 Spring graduated: all accomplished with a GPA better than 3.4 in four years from admission at NC State and/or two year transferred from community colleges. From those six, five are enrolled in graduate school pursuing at least master degree in their major field of undergraduate concentration. One graduate who did not pursue graduate school is working as electrical engineer in a major corporation.

Within the current cohort of STEM scholars, all have been involved in extracurricular activities: seven have been research undergraduates on campus (two completed off-campus REU programs), four have participated in co-ops/industry internships, one completed a study abroad, and two have been counselors or elected in leadership societies.

The need to track the locations of bicycles in an Automatic Bicycle Rental System presents several challenges for control, communication, power management, reliability, and security. This paper proposes an effective bicycle-tracking system to ensure the above challenges. The Automatic Bicycle Rental System (ABRS) is a senior engineering design project at………………. This project requires the collaboration of Mechanical, Computer, and Electrical engineering students to research, design, and build the system. This allows college community to rent a bicycle using their student ID or email address with appropriate authentication. As a part of ABRS, a bicycle-tracking module was implemented with consideration for cost and integration with the other computer and mechanical systems. The bicycle-tracking module allows ABRS administrators to view the current location of every bicycle that is part of the system. This requires mounting a tracking module on each bicycle. That tracking module must be able to determine its current location and communicate with the bicycle rack and with the ABRS backend server. The backend server is a web application hosted on a cloud-based provider. ABRS administrator can control the system through the backend server. Communications and Authentication, System Control and Tracking, and Power Supply and Management were considered during the design and implementation process. Following student outcomes were assessed: • Identifies a well-defined engineering problem statement motivated by real-world problems and issues. • An ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints.

Thermodynamics is well documented as a difficult course in the engineering and technology curricula that require it. The flipped lecture format has been similarly documented to improve student-teacher interaction and student engagement. This work attempts to address whether flipping a difficult, demanding thermodynamics course improves student self-efficacy.

Student surveys were conducted in multiple sections of a thermodynamics course over two years to evaluate student perceptions of the flipped course format. Students had positive perceptions about how class time was used in the flipped lecture style which was expected based on previous literature. Nearly all of the respondents agreed that using class time for discussion and problem-solving was very useful. No specific topic was singled out as unsuitable for the flip format; however several comments suggest that highly conceptual topics or topics that may be difficult to understand without examples are not suited for the flip format. Many students commented that the video lectures allowed them to be more prepared when they went to class and more actively engaged with class material. Most students also agree that they are confident in their ability to solve problems and apply their knowledge to new problems introduced in the course and in their ability to solve related problems in their future academic and professional endeavors. A majority of students also agreed that the course helped them to develop their own questions about the material and become more independent learners. These responses strongly support the use of the flipped class format for teaching technical courses and to improve self-efficacy.

As both professional societies and universities campuses take more active measures to promote diversity awareness and competency, graduate student inclusion is often a secondary focus after undergraduate and faculty enrichment. Many campus diversity offices are already overburdened with increased demands for programming, leaving graduate students to form their own support communities, which can suffer from lack of guidance or cohesion. While it can be tempting to encourage graduate students to attend undergraduate organizations or nominally include them in faculty mixers, neither proposition promotes the discussions graduate students require for personal or professional development.

At Tulane University, the lack of graduate specific diversity programming has lead to the formation of two communities initiated by and continued through graduate student efforts: Women+ in Science and Engineering (WISE) and The Gender and Sexual Diversity Graduate Coalition. The importance of faculty and administration support, identification of constraints on a graduate community, and a review of successful community activities are discussed in the context of these two groups.

Best practices from a year of events for each community are reviewed in detail. These practices include the implementation of a technical communication seminar and colloquia series, an LGBT in Academia Panel with out faculty members, a workshop on overcoming Imposter Syndrome, and the start of an LGBT in STEM P-12 mentorship program. Both graduate student communities saw increased levels of involvement by centralizing communication methods through a single social media account. Furthermore, the collaboration between graduate communities have been integral to the success of the individual groups as each fulfills intersecting and separate roles within the graduate student body.

These best practices, and all of Tulane’s graduate community activities, are in continual development and benefit from constant feedback.

Suggested Plans and Practices for Further Development of Engineering Educators in the Arab Gulf Region

Abstract:

The increased mobility of engineers worldwide poses new and difficult challenges to country and/or region–based systems of engineering education, whose advocates now face the possibility that their graduates may not possess the skills recognized as valuable in other countries or by international employers operating within their own country or region. One of the world’s regions where engineering education is rapidly evolving, and becoming increasingly international is: the Arab Gulf Region ((Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman) which faces significant challenges as it seeks to meet the demands on the engineering profession in the years to come. Engineering faculty in the Arab Gulf Region, and the young in particular, need to expand their technical knowledge and develop new competencies to further their technical professional development and keep up with modern approaches to teaching and learning. This paper explores ways to effective professional development of Region’s engineering educators to enable them to assume the roles they are entrusted with. The purpose here is to offer a new way to think about the development of the professional engineering educator. In this respect, the paper focuses on:(i) the cognitive processes that faculty would follow as they grow and learn more about teaching and learning,(ii) the discipline-based industrial/practical experience they need to acquire in their locale to add to their repertoire as “practitioners” of engineering, and (iii) the institutional initiatives, including administrative support, encouragement, and resources. What is needed is to create a change in culture within the institution, the department or the college. Also, to generate a comprehensive and integrated set of components: clearly articulated expectations, a reward system for good teaching aligned with expectations, and opportunities for professional development to occur. The ultimate goal is to identify what Arab Gulf Region’s engineering educators and their institutions should do to generate more powerful and responsive forms of education that improves the quality of student learning. The author makes use of his past experience as an engineering educator in the Region, plus, his continuous monitoring of: plans, programs, practices, and relevant activities of teaching and learning in Region’s colleges.

Women represent 50.2% of the US resident population and represent 12.9% of the Engineering workforce (NSF, NCSES, 2015). The underrepresentation of women in traditionally male-dominated academic programs and professions urge scholars to investigate strategies to attract, develop, and retain more females for future innovation and discovery (Balakrishnan & Low, 2016). The purpose of the Women Engineers in Entrepreneurship (WE²) program is to create an alternative industry pathway for females in engineering and computer science (CS) academic degree programs through entrepreneurship. The National Science Foundation recognizes the importance of developing entrepreneurial skills and knowledge in the new generation of scientists and engineers, and the skill set required to succeed are different from the skills needed for basic research (NSF, I-Corps, 2012). Entrepreneurship education and mentoring activities will provide scaffolding for the participants in terms of social capital in the field, self-confidence, and entrepreneurship identity formation. Engineering is constructed as masculine, and women must create an identity independent from the gender frames that construct engineering as belonging to men. The paper will explore the literature on identity formation of female students in engineering and summarize external data on the impacts of entrepreneurship education and real-world application on identity formation.

Faculty peer review has long been implemented in higher education as a form of formative feedback to support the refinement of instructional practice. It has been recognized as a tool for change that provides faculty an opportunity to strengthen good instructional practices and disseminate new alternative instructional techniques. An alternative to the traditional form of peer review, conducted by faculty observing each other’s classes in person, involves the video and audio recording and review of class sessions using asynchronous video-annotated peer review (VAPR). In traditional faculty peer review, local centers of teaching and learning frequently coordinate the peer review and provide guidance on the practice, however they are limited in their ability to attend each class. The asynchronous application of VAPR allows instructional support specialists to observe many class sessions at their convenience. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role that instructional support specialists assume when they review faculty instructional practice through VAPR. Findings show that instructional support specialist comments primarily focus on the increased engagement of students in classroom activities. However, when an instructional support specialist was involved in the VAPR process, faculty provided less comments in the review and those comments were typically agreeable with instructional support specialist comments. This study provides insight into how instructional support specialist involvement can increase the quality of peer review, while allowing faculty to have ownership in the review process.

This paper describes a laboratory course designed to enhance education in a traditional mechanical engineering laboratory focused on controls and instrumentation. The laboratory course and specific modules are part of a broader effort to enhance the mechanical engineering laboratory curriculum with modern pedagogical methods, incorporate ethics through the curriculum, and improve student outcomes. The laboratory course was designed to inspire a heightened awareness of engineering ethics in addition to traditional controls. A new module has been added that applies the conventional topic of Programmable Logic Controllers in the context of controlling the breathing of an artificial lung. To assess the laboratory’s success a survey was developed for students interacting with the new module. Results indicate the new laboratory experiment has been very successful in improving student awareness of the ethical charge engineers have to perform quality work.

The use of the flipped classroom strategy of instructional design in STEM classes continues to receive favorable attention. There is a preponderance of evidence indicating that active learning (the flipped classroom is inherently tied to active learning) is associated with higher examination scores, lower failure rates, and increase student engagement. However, implementation and execution of the flipped classroom strategy presents new instructional design challenges. The success of the flipped classroom depends, at least to some degree, on students attaining a basic level of understanding of relevant material before participating in that day’s flipped classroom activities. Developing those classroom activities is of paramount importance, but motivating and assuring that students come adequately prepared is almost of equal importance. It is also worth noting that with many faculty lacking any experience as students in a flipped class, flipping a class is most likely both revolutionary and evolutionary. This paper describes the evolution of the author’s efforts to address the challenge of motivating and assessing student preparation in a series of flipped calculus based courses for engineering students: Engineering Analysis I, II and III. The courses were taught in progression beginning in the summer of 2015, through the spring of 2016; then starting over again in the summer of 2016 with Engineering Analysis I. Each semester there were two sections, with combined enrollment anywhere between 60 and 100 students. Pre-class assignments are a combination of videos, OneNote™ notebook pages, e-text sections, and on-line practice problems. The exact composition of those materials has changed over the semesters, and that evolution will be discussed and when possible analyzed. Pre-class assignment scores were a small part of the final grade calculation. Initially, readiness assessment tests (RATs) were not used, with the pre-class assignments serving the dual role of preparation material and readiness assessment. In the spring of 2016 daily readiness assessment tests were given in Engineering Analysis III. The RATs were administered on paper and collected during the first five or ten minutes of class. They were scored after class, with that score having a small contribution to the final course grade. Informal and anecdotal evidence suggests that students valued the readiness assessment tests. The RATs required the development of different kinds of questions than those typically given on examinations, and the paper discusses the development of RATs and shares some specific examples of both successful and unsuccessful RAT questions. With an eye towards scaling these courses to larger enrollments, in the summer of 2016 readiness assessment testing was moved to the online system Learning Catalytics ™, enabling automatic scoring. Implementation and evaluation details about the readiness assessment portion of Learning Catalytics are discussed in the paper.

In recent years, more condensed graduate programs (such as one-year Master’s programs) have emerged to better enable students to advance their understanding beyond the undergraduate level to aid in potential career advancement. However, limited research has been conducted to understand how the student experience in these programs compare to more traditional graduate programs and the motivators that influence students to enroll in these new programs.

In the fall of 2015, 7 engineering programs at a large, public university introduced new Master’s programs designed to be completed in one year rather than the more traditional 2+ years. In the spring of the first year of the program, the students in these innovative programs as well as all other Engineering Master’s and Ph.D. students were invited to participate in a Program Assessment survey. This survey was designed to explore student motivations for enrolling in their graduate program, career and research goals, academic perceptions, challenges, and program satisfaction. Respondents were separated in three groups for analysis: One-year Master’s students, More-than- one-year Master’s students, and Ph.D. students.

As expected, a majority of students in both One-year and More-than- one-year Master’s programs indicated their plans were to pursue a career in industry, followed by those planning to pursue a doctorate in an area of engineering. Both groups also had a majority of students indicate that research was at least moderately important to their career- and education-goals. However, for the More-than- one-year Master’s students only, the students who reported planning a career in industry rated research significantly less important than those with academically related career plans. Many Master’s students in traditional programs have, therefore, indicated that they do not see research expertise as their primary goal for completing the program. These programs may want to consider the goals and activities offered for Master’s students and whether or not they are aiding students in meeting their career goals.

Results showed that among the expected motivators of career goals, speed, and cost, One-year Master’s students also reported different responses on the three Likert-style scales that asked students about academic perceptions, challenges, and program satisfaction. One-year and More-than- one-year Master’s students’ responses were not significantly different for their academic perceptions or program satisfaction. However, the One-year students rated the level of challenge of their programs significantly higher than their More-than- one-year counterparts, specifically rating coursework, course load, and out of class experiences with faculty as significantly more challenging. This is not unexpected as these programs are meant to be accelerated and are new programs being offered for the first time. However, to encourage success and increased satisfaction with the One-year Master’s programs, suggestions for way to reduce these challenges moving forward will be discussed in more detail in the paper.

Future plans include collecting further data in Spring 2017, which will function both to replicate and to reveal the effects of improvements implemented following the initial year of the programs.